Obama’s Clever Use of Catholics

President Obama has been romancing Catholics once again, and is apparently doing so with impunity, even though he insists that, as a Christian, he can favor the killing of the innocent.

At a town hall meeting in Albuquerque, Obama told the audience, “I think my public service is part of that effort to express my Christian faith,” but then went on to explain, “Now, with respect to the abortion issue, I actually think—I mean, there are laws both federal, state and constitutional that are in place. And I think that this is an area where I think Bill Clinton had the right formulation a couple of decades ago, which is abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.”

If you find this to be a rather hypocritical position for a “Christian” to take, hold on to your hat because it gets a whole lot worse. Reuters, one of the news services covering that particular meeting in Albuquerque, used a stock photo to accompany its report. The photo, which depicted the president with Catholic priest, Father Vien Nguyen, who leads the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church in New Orleans, was taken during a reception at the White House earlier this year in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Father Nguyen was also honored for his help within the community after Hurricane Katrina. Father Nguyen is not from New Mexico, but that apparently mattered little to the press at Reuters who found it convenient to use the opportunity to showcase a Catholic priest with Obama. Perhaps it’s no accident that Father Nguyen was honored by Obama since he is described by Politics Daily as a man who “has shown extreme grit and skill as a community organizer.”

In yet another attempt to highlight himself with Catholics, Obama traveled to Iowa this past week and met with a Catholic family living in Des Moines so that he could talk about “issues” facing middle-class Americans. During his visit he was joined by Father Michael Amadeo of Holy Trinity Catholic Church and the Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Des Moines, Most Reverend Richard E. Pates. The photo of Obama with Bishop Pates presents the sort of chummy, friend-to-friend image that Obama wants to portray to the world, though his actual reasons for using Catholics as public props are perhaps anything but honorable.

After all, this is a president who deceived the Catholic bishops on the subject of nationalized health care, employed every tactic in the book to garner support from the Catholic Health Association for his draconian proposal and, to this very day, has never suggested that his anti-life policies and personal convictions on abortion are an affront to every Christian—including Catholics.

So why do bishops, priests and lay people fawn all over the president and do whatever they can to be part of his image-building program? One might guess it is because he is, after all, the president of the United States and one must be respectful of the office, if not the man. Yet, I maintain that there are more productive and vital things these priests and bishops should be doing with their time.

In light of a recent Pew Forum poll revealing the shocking statistic that “Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their Church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in Holy Communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ,” perhaps teaching Catholic doctrine should take a front row seat and become the only preoccupation that Catholic priests, including bishops, have time to focus on these days.

Troubling though this ongoing use of Catholics to legitimize his agenda seems to be, it is not nearly as scandalous as Obama’s bold-faced suggestion that one can be Christian and pro-abortion! The two just do not mix.

Yet we cannot forget that the Bidens, Pelosis and Schwarzeneggers of the world have already paved the way for Obama’s reprehensible duplicity. Those in the Catholic political spotlight have not only caused confusion but, by their actions, have implied that mainstream Catholics should be tolerant when they publicly take stands that are contrary to the beliefs of the Church.

After all, Catholic bishops have not united in their reprimand of those scalawags, so what can one expect them to do about Christianity’s Obama?

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If 80 bishops of the US protested Notre Dame’s giving this anti-life leader a stage on which to promote himself and his policies, they should be equally (or more) public in protesting other Catholic leaders giving him that same stage–in particular after the way he used them to help get a grossly anti-life health care bill through Congress.

Years ago, a monsignor who was at the time an apparatchik in the USCC or NCCB (now together as the USCCB) remarked to Fr. Richard John Neuhaus in an unguarded moment that that organization was the “religious arm of the Democratic Party.” In the recent streamlining of USCCB’s DC staff they dropped 1/3 of them, which is progress. Just 2/3 to go.

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